


Nights alive

by alexiel_neesan



Category: DCU
Genre: Jason Todd does what he wants, Multi, Nail Polish, Slice of Life, canon-typical violence (mention), pre-NU52, tyson the cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 14:08:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2231853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexiel_neesan/pseuds/alexiel_neesan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim likes things. Things like coffee, knowing things, his friends, and having a house not empty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nights alive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_protagonist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_protagonist/gifts).



> I talked with a writing teacher friend recently and told her I liked writing about other fictional characters sleeping, eating or otherwise doing quiet things they are not "allowed" in their own narrative. She laughed, then loved it. 
> 
> This story is one of those.

Tim liked many things. 

Alfred would call most of those “the little pleasure of life”: an afternoon spent skateboarding, getting the last can of grape Zesti, stealing Bruce’s coffee in the morning or as close to morning as they used to come to after patrol together, the burgers from the diner down the street from the second high school he went to, playing video games with Ives, the sun glinting off the waves in San Francisco, Dick’s displays of affection. He liked the minutia of combing through files and figuring things out, the hunt sometimes; he liked being able to speak to some of the greatest people on Earth and being answered equal to equal. He liked the sound the air made while flying through the city only on a zipline. 

When he reached for his coffee, the cup was empty. So was the thermos he brought with him. On the screen— he didn’t recognize what was on the screen. He had started with the plans for the latest Neon Knights initiative backed by Wayne Enterprises, going with his own files for which areas would benefit the most of it instead of relying on files he knew were wrong. Someone was rotten in one of the consultant agencies WE used regularly, and more and more false information that was detrimental to the city and to WE’s affairs were introduced in their system. 

The Neon Knights plans led to the search for the rotten element, then going over the 911 calls for more recent hotspots associated with the areas Tim was thinking about to cross-reference errors from the reports he had, then looking over the consultancy agencies he was directly suspecting, sending out feelers and reminders to himself to ask Babs about it the next day via email. 

If Bruce had been in town, he would have taken care of the false information problem. 

But Bruce was across the world in a brand new uniform, Dick and Damian were doing all the dynamic duo work, and Tim was staying in, up all night to fix things during the day at a job he had never wanted nor was qualified for. He was seventeen, emancipated, a high school dropout, and here he was, being a public face for Wayne Enterprises. 

The screen was half-way down the page on the ballistic specs of a murder scene in the Hamptons in ’96. He could not remember how he had gotten there. 

A popup changed the lights to green, twisting into a familiar mask. No audio, just a line: “ _Go to bed, Tim._ ”

He snorted, slouched a little more into his seat, slipping until he was at the edge of it. He didn’t know where Babs was, currently, just that she was away from Gotham and answered most emails the same day they were sent. And still, from wherever she was, she was keeping an eye on him.

Tim liked that.

“You win. I’m going,” he said to the screen. The mask winked and disappeared. Tim almost slipped off his seat.

He dragged himself out of his control room, taking the thermos and cup with him. There was no Alfred or silent housekeeper to clean behind him. He thought he did a good job on his own. Even Alfred had told him so, when he dropped by (and cleaned, even if Tim had asked him not to— Alfred always took his words with a grandfatherly twinkle in his eyes and a gentle refusal accompanied by food. Tim didn’t really mind. Alfred was Alfred and his words held more strength and power than even Batman’s.) He had roombas to help him.

Tim, when he remodeled the brownstone that technically didn’t belong to anyone with the last name of Wayne or any of their associates, followed the somewhat traditional plan of the Batcaves and other safe houses: control room and gadget downstairs, preferably underground with several access points, “normal” house on top with hidden rooms and exits, rooftop able to withstand an helicopter or the batjet. Or even a kryptonian or two. 

He kept the people who knew where he lived to a minimum —Babs, Steph, Cass, Ives and Zoanne even if she wasn’t talking to him at the moment (and, if he was honest with himself, probably never would again; despite the pain of losing his friend, maybe it was for the best, for her), Tam, Dick, Alfred, Cassie, Kon and Bart. He kept the people who could come and go in and out freely to an even more restricted list. 

And this even more restricted list was the reason the scene he came across in his living room didn’t make him pause. 

Well, no, he did pause, wondering if he was so tired that he hadn’t heard the alarms that let him know that any of his doors had been open, and if flopping on the couch to sleep, because screw going upstairs to his bed, was going to get him hurt or not. Maybe he needed another couch here. 

Tyson, Tam’s cat and Tim’s favorite cat in Gotham, wound around his ankles, purring loudly. 

“Come on Tim, standing in the light of the screen is not going to make you melt.”

Tim snorted, putting one foot in front of the other. “I don’t know, maybe it will today,” he replied softly to Tam.

She was sitting on his couch, bathed by the glare of the TV. On the coffee table in front of her, Tim could see boxes of take-out (Polish, by the logo, a restaurant by Tam’s place she was a regular at), her tablet, and a multitude of nail polish bottles. 

On the rest of the couch, his feet on Tam’s lap and his face turned toward the TV, Jason Todd was laying down, his chest moving slowly up and down. The fingernails on the hand Tim could see were the same colors as the bruise on his cheekbone, violet and red and navy blue. 

Tim very much doubted the older man was actually asleep. He choose to perch on the arm of the couch by Tam. 

“What are you watching?”

“Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking. And Jason here hacked your Netflix to get the British and Latin American versions.” Tam patted Jason’s leg in her lap fondly. “He finally admitted his addiction to telenovelas.” 

“Fuck you,” was the answering sleepy grumble. Tam patted his leg some more. 

Tim reclined against the back of the couch, slouching in a way that would get him on the floor soon. With the thermos and cup still in hands, his balance wasn’t as good as it could have been. 

He yawned widely, the screen he wasn’t paying attention to swimming in his field of vision. 

Maybe he was too tired to perch on couches properly, too.

“Come on, sit down properly, Boy Wonder. You make my back hurt just to see you.” Tam scooted closer to Jason, who moved too, sitting up instead of sprawling all 6 feet of him, keeping his legs ending in Tam’s lap. There was enough space for Tim to slip between her and the arm of the couch, and Tim was now close enough to see that Jason’s toe-nails were painted too, violet and red and navy blue. 

All three settled in. Thermos and cup ended on the edge of the coffee table. Tam was moving only slightly to exchange a bottle of polish to another, putting them next to her hands. How she could see any proper color in the half light was a mystery to Tim. He watched her and the slow rise and fall of Jason’s chest behind her, letting the moves and the buzz of the TV lull him into a comfortable, safe, doze. 

He liked the days they were here. He liked not having an empty house. 

He didn’t like that Jason mostly turned up when something had gone horrifically wrong, things Tim usually never heard of, but he liked that Jason saw his house as a safe place. There was no fixed point that had really started the habit, no real reason for Tim to have kicked Jason out once it became an habit. 

Tam raised a small bottle next to her cheek, shook it while looking straight at Tim, basically asking if he’d let her paint his nails. He said no, every time. (The only time he said yes, they were all buzzed, and Tam painted a very realistic series of tiny dicks on his fingernails. He kept pictures.) He didn’t really like that she asked, but he liked the feeling of… acceptance, of belonging. She never pushed him to like the things she and Jason liked and did together, but she always asked.

He liked that Jason and Tam were friends, in a way that made him wonder if they were sleeping together every other week —never mind that all three of them had crashed in the same bed or on the couch more than once. He liked that outside of the nebulous identities of the Red Hood, and Tam-Fox-working-at-Wayne-Entreprises, and Red Robin slash Timothy Jackson Drake Wayne, they knew who the others were and in the blue buzz of the screen, they were Just Jason, Just Tam, Just Tim. 

Tim’s place. Leave the cape at the door. The thought made him quirk his lips up. 

“Good thoughts, baby bird?”

“I like,” he said. 

/end


End file.
